Beth wanted me to vant about this.

I was trying to find a website for Rainbow Foods because really, the only way anyone is going to appreciate this is if I could provide you with a picture. Unfortunately, I can’t find one. If anyone does come up with a link, please let me know.

Okay, so, I live in Minnesota and there is a grocery store here called Rainbow Foods. Well, lately, I have decided that the powers that be at RF are all on crack. Why, you ask?

Their new radio ads are, I swear, 3 minutes long. They are trying to do some sort of beatnik poem, the soft jazzy music is playing in the background. Now, poetry is very important to me. It helped me keep my sanity for many years. I do not want to hear poetry about someone going shopping. This is not fun. I’m going to see if I can write down part of the ad the next time I hear it. If I haven’t thrown my radio out the window first.

The radio ads are annoying but they do not set me off like the billboards. Picture this, if you will, you are driving (riding) down the highway. Your eyes are drawn to the billboard because it is brightly colored and shiny. You stare at it in terror. Oh, my God, it’s a giant tomato (I hate tomatoes. They are evil and too red and smushy. And, Mom, I don’t care that I ate them up until I was 5. 5 years liking tomatoes, 32 years hating them. I win)! So the powers that be at RF have decided “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to give fruits and vegetables faces and then pose them?”

No, no, it wouldn’t be fun. It is sick and wrong. Don’t play with your food.

Beth and I are driving down the highway from somewhere, possibly Big 10, she is talking on the phone and then I see it.

3 loaves of bread…with faces…with the stupid quote “We’re so fresh the other guys are toast.” Now the thing that gets to me the most (and I’m sure this is much more rational then when I went on this 10 minute vant to Beth. Poor Beth. I think she wanted to have me committed) is that one of these loaves is a loaf of French bread. French bread is fairly recognizable, right? Well, obviously the advertising geniuses don’t think so because they have taken another piece of bread, a darker brown, and fashioned it into the shape of a beret. So apparently, dear readers, RF execs think we are stupid.

Here’s the one thing I don’t think they had in mind. As we are riding by and these loaves of bread are leering down at us, it hits me what the beret-wearing loaf of French Bread looks like.

Yes. It looks like a penis. I’ve heard the company might be in trouble. Maybe RF figures subliminal messages are best to encourage us to shop. “Come to Rainbow, buy some phallic shaped bread. Your life will be great from now on!”

It would be so much better if you could see these ads. You’d understand then. There’s one of this potato with these huge teeth. It gives me nightmares.